Shanghai Mobile announced plans to initiate the "158" number section at the end of this month and issue the number to 1.5 million of its mobile phone users.

Although China's Ministry of Information declared earlier that the "15" and "18" number sections would be reserved for 3G use, a representative from Shanghai Mobile said that the new "158" number section they were going to launch this time had nothing to do with 3G. Instead, they are just using it to ease the number resource shortage in Shanghai.

Shanghai Mobile currently has over 10 million mobile phone users. It initiated the 159 number section in March 2006 and already issued those prefixed numbers to 2.2 million users.